Posted Monday March 15, 2010 4 months, 2 weeks ago
ESPN television sportscaster Erin Andrews arrives at the 2009 ESPY Awards in Los Angeles in this July 15, 2009 file photograph. A Chicago insurance man pleaded not guilty November 23, 2009 to charges that he peeped into television sports reporter Erin Andrews' hotel room when she was nude, took video of her and tried to sell the footage. Michael David Barrett is free on $100,000 bond and was charged in federal court in Los Angeles, faces up to five years in federal prison if convicted. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok/Files
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Chicago insurance salesman was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Monday for making nude videos through hotel peepholes of television sports reporter Erin Andrews and posting them on the Internet.
Michael Barrett, 48, had pleaded guilty to stalking Andrews over an 18-month period and removing the peepholes from the doors of at least three different hotel rooms to shoot video of her naked on his mobile phone.
After a celebrity web site turned down buying the videos, Barrett posted 10 of them on the Internet, identifying the ESPN reporter as the victim.
Barrett was sentenced by a federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday and ordered to pay Andrews $7,366 in restitution.
Andrews, 31, told Monday's sentencing hearing that she still suffers fear, anxiety and public humiliation as a result of having been stalked.
"I'm being victimized every day...and I did nothing to deserve it," Andrews said, adding the videos will likely always be on the Internet.
"I'm living public humiliation. It's my body that's on the Internet...He stalked me, he terrorized me -- this will never be over for me, and I don't want it to ever be over for you," she said, looking at Barrett.
Barrett apologized, saying; "I have no words to adequately tell Miss Andrews how sorry I am for what I've done to her. I hope that one day she will forgive me."
At least 16 other women were victimized by Barrett in the same way, according to court papers. Their names were not revealed but the court papers described them as "female sports reporters and other television personalities."
Andrews, who was voted America's "sexiest sportscaster" by Playboy magazine in 2007 and 2008, will be one of the celebrity contestants in the upcoming season of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars", starting on March 22.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant)
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